


A Long and Winding Road

by LadyDeBrief



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: AO3 1 Million, BAMF Pepper, Comfort Sex, F/M, POV Pepper Potts, Pepper supports him wholeheartedly, Protective Pepper, Sexual Content, Tony Angst, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony does the best he can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1187052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDeBrief/pseuds/LadyDeBrief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was, much like he'd told Bruce, a terrible privilege, this power Pepper had over him. That she was aware of that and gave it the due seriousness was one of the reasons he so easily trusted her with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long and Winding Road

Tony's standing in front of the window when she enters, staring out at the city skyline under a sky that is graded from red up to deep blue, the remnants of a spectacular sunset that had been annoying from the conference room on the other side of the building where she has been trapped for the last six hours. 

His jacket is pushed back in folds around his wrists, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and both the bulges from his fists and the line of his shoulders speaks of the tension running through him.

It's been a long day—a long _month—_ and it's not yet over. Close, so close she can almost taste it, but not done.

She can feel her own shoulders slumped, her arms heavy with the compounding weariness of the days.

She would really, really like to be able to tuck an arm in his, pull him from the room, ride the elevator up in silence, and then collapse into bed and not move for at least a week.

They both need just that, and when this is over, she just might take those vacation days he keeps reminding her she has and vanish with him to... somewhere. Somewhere far away from here, without cell phones or CNN or United States fucking Senators.

She winces at the curse, even contained in her own head, but it's turning into one of those years and she is running low on patience. She needs to save it for said senators. 

Repressing a sigh, but not a wince, she ignores the protests of her aching feet and crosses the carpeted floor, watching his reflection as she approaches. It's shadowed, both by the lighting and by the stress set in his face.

She does thread her arm through his and slips her hand into his pocket to tangle her fingers with his.

He starts, and looks over at her, but accepts the gesture willingly enough. 

"Hey," he says quietly and then bends and cranes his neck to brush a kiss over her hair. 

"Hey," she says, managing a smile and meeting his gaze in the window. 

He rests his canted head on hers when she lets it sink down onto his shoulder and, after a brief squeeze of his fingers, sighs.

It's quiet and a little bit heartbreaking, and she doesn't know what else to do but press into him a little more.

"How'd it go?" he asks finally.

She shrugs the shoulder not trapped between them and says. "They'll come around."

He frowns and, as much as she'd like to, she can't fix that with words at the moment. Anything she said would be a platitude or a lie, and he's never fond of either. Right now it would only make things worse.

He snorts and says, "Maybe we should just give them what they want: my head on a platter and my body burned in effigy."

The bitterness isn't nearly masked by the sarcasm and she turns her head to kiss his shoulder.

"No," she says, firmly. It comes out a little rough and she'll blame the overuse of her voice if needed. The anger sitting thick and hot in her throat is like a tangible, living thing, something she's been holding back since this whole thing started. Every day she questions that decision a little bit more.

Perhaps if she'd snapped at them from the beginning, perhaps if she'd reminded them that she had been Tony's PA and she was his girlfriend, but she was not a goddamn doormat, thank you very much, and she was not backing him just because he was her man.

She hadn't gotten this position on her back and she was damned well not going to let them think that she was still there, asking to be screwed.

Tomorrow might be time to change her course. Remind them who was and who was _not_ the Chief Executive Officer of Stark Industries.

But they were all gone for the day—thank _God—_ and she was not going to think about them any more tonight. She was tired and she was sore and she really just wanted to be alone with Tony.

She smiled a little, wryly, because even if she was not willing to let any of them screw her metaphorically, she was more than willing to let Tony do so literally.

"What?" Tony asked, sounding just a shade amused, and she blinked and looked at him.

"Hmm?"

"What has you grinning like that?"

She shook her head. "Nothing." Then she pressed a kiss to his lips and decided to follow her earlier plan. She could always take a leaf from his book and get up to keep working after he was asleep.

He chased her when she pulled back and she grinned and let him, backing up so he had to turn to follow her.

It only took three steps for things to change, chaste pecks not enough. His hands slid out of his pockets, freeing her fingers only so he could get his hands on her waist, then her hips. As they slid down to her ass, her hands were moving up to his lapels, wrapping around them and tugging him closer. She sucked his lower lip between hers and he opened his mouth on a groan.

Pepper pounced on that opportunity, her tongue darting forward to caress and taste his tongue.

He groaned again, the pitch rising with want and his hands aggressively yanking her closer, the rigid heat of his erection easily felt even through their layers of clothes. Now it was her turn to moan, her hips jerking restlessly against his. 

"Oh God, Pepper," he panted. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as he spun them around swiftly and then backed up until his back hit the wall. His thigh pressed between her legs and she moaned and ground down against the offered pressure. Not enough, not nearly enough, but she wasn't in any particular rush and it felt damn good at the moment.

His head hit the wall with a hollow thump as it fell back and she sucked a spot on his jaw, careful not to do so too hard or for too long. The last thing he needed was anything that might prompt reminders of his recklessly playboy ways, even if those times were history that became more ancient by the day.

She wanted to leave a mark, something that she knew would make him smile at his reflection in the mirror when he happened to spot it, but it had to be somewhere that no one else would see it.

That was more than all right with her. No one else needed to see it, and she didn't really want them to. That he would know who he belonged to, who claimed him and kept him, was more than enough for her.

So she moved down, aiming for his collarbone or maybe a nipple, but got distracted by his neck, the steel cables of his tendons, the bobbing ball of his Adam's apple. She licked the first, tracing the line from his jaw down to the join of his neck, then over. She bit down ever so lightly, teeth grazing, and smiled at the whimper it provoked and how he jumped under her mouth.

"Fuck, Pepper," he said, and she just hummed and stayed there, hands working on undoing his tie, the shush of silk as it slid free causing her skin to pebble from her head down to her toes.

His fingers had come up from her ass to her back and they clenched and scrabbled over the wool of her suit jacket, then dipped down and came up underneath. She pulled back on a gasp, shivering as the rough pads of his fingers skated over the skin of her back, bared by the low line of her dress.

A single finger traced up her spine as her head dipped, forehead brushing against the slight stubble of his jaw and contrasting with the more pronounced rasp of his goatee. She turned his name into an obscene sound and clutched at his shirt, distracted from her mission to undo the buttons by his hands.

The one kept up the light pressure of a single fingertip, marking not just the bumps of her spine but around her shoulder blades and back again, while the other splayed wide and dipped below the fabric of her dress, skating just over the top of her ass, promising more, but not delivering.

It was her turn to be utterly undone and whatever you said about his countless partners, he had learned how to play a woman's body like goddamn violin. Her muscles were deliciously taut, riding that edge between pain and pleasure as she laid her head on his shoulder and surrendered, her only contributions to hold on with white-knuckled grips and the shift of her hips that she couldn't help as she rode his thigh.

"That's it," he murmured, shifting his weight to better support her and finally sliding his hand down to cup her ass and lift her higher. "Come on, Pepper," he continued, breath ghosting over her ear from his bent head. "My turn," he said. "You break me," he confessed, voice nearly cracking, as if to prove his words. "I think I can't go on another moment, think I can't survive one more storm, one more tragedy in my life, and then there you are. You shatter me and then you put me back together better than before."

The raw honestly in his words was doing as much to send heat curling through her, licking at her insides and stoking that building flame deep inside.

He brushed a kiss over her temple and said, "I'd be lost without you. Or dead. Hell, even if I wasn't, I wouldn't be worth the air I breathed."

She sucked in a breath, feeling it shudder into her lungs, her heart tripping in time. Tears pricked at her eyes and she shut them, but that didn't stop his voice, or his hands, branding her skin, gentle even as he squeezed her ass and pressed against her spine.

The arc reactor dug into her skin through the layers of his shirts and her dress, solid and round, and she moaned again, a needy sound that escaped through a throat tight with love and lust and even a little edge of sadness and heartbreak for this man.

The truth was, she needed him as much as he needed her. She could be ruthlessly competent anywhere, of that she had no doubt, and if she wasn't here, her life would not be wasted, but here, with him, she could do so much _more._

Not just for the world, for Stark Industries, for the many and sundry philanthropic and political and other causes this job brought her.

For Tony, for the terribly hurt man hiding behind the brashly confident shell, a good man no matter what anyone said.

So much better than he gave himself credit for and that was why she needed to be here. Not for the genius, the billionaire, the playboy, or the philanthropist. For what all of those carefully conducted masks hid, the gentle soul, who loved so fiercely and would protect the same way anyone and everyone, even if they didn't deserve it.

As the pressure built up inside, she said, "Tony." She tried to work a hand down between them, feeling—as she so often did under his touch, his gaze, his pure and direct focus—utterly out of sorts. 

He thwarted her plans as a matter of course, not always just because he could, and sometimes because he couldn't help himself, but she was determined that her plan tonight would not be waylaid.

This wasn't about her, whatever he thought. She didn't need this nearly as much as he did.

She had, however, learned to adapt on the fly over the years, earned a goddamn black belt in it, as a matter of fact, and so she gave up on undoing all of his buttons and went straight for the prize, scraping her fingernails over his stomach so he sucked it in on a sharp breath and gave her the room she needed to get past his belt and down into the heat between them.

"Oh _fuck,"_ he groaned as she took him in hand and gave a good firm stroke. 

His knees wobbled and they very nearly listed to the side, but he spread his feet and caught them both, then pulled his hand from her ass and out of her dress. 

All she managed was a "Tony, no—" before his hand was back on her skin, cradling her thigh and pulling inexorably up until she was balanced on one foot. This took away the last of her ability to control her position and he ruthlessly used that, shifting her more fully onto his thigh so he could grind up against her, sparks of pleasure lighting off like the precursor to a fireworks extravaganza.

His heart was pounding in his chest, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs, and she wasn't in much better shape, but that was fine with her because if he was that close to the edge, she had a chance to finish what she started before he reduced her to what promised to barely classify her above comatose. 

She tightened her grip on his dick, half out of pure reaction, and half out of a desire to drag him onto that cliff edge with her.

The thumb she flicked over the head, slipping in the slick mess, was completely deliberate and she bit her lip at the deep growl of pleasure that caused. It rumbled up through his chest and she could feel it echo through her own body.

She tried to keep a steady rhythm, to maintain some level of control, but the hand not on her thigh came up to get a handful of hair and wrench her head around to where he could plunder her mouth, tongue sliding in and out in a manner suggesting he wished they were wearing far less clothes.

She agreed, and dammit, she had tried, but she wasn't entirely unhappy with how things had gone, either.

She did speed up her hand, though, agreement with his suggestion, and his fingers tightened in her hair and on her thigh.

She had a brief moment to hope that she'd have to wear longer skirts or risk a few rumors of her own for the rest of the week.

A twist of her wrist and the drag of her thumb over that spot just under the head of his dick and his knees actually gave out a little, dropping them a few inches before he managed to brace his legs and back again. 

That was the final bit of pressure she needed in just the right spot to have her arching back out of the kiss and all but _keening_ his name as the pleasure washed through her, the promised fireworks show delivering spectacularly.

When she swayed limply, the slightest nudge of his hand still on her head toppled her forward. His thumb stroked slowly over the skin of her thigh and she couldn't do anything but pant a damp spot over his collarbone and cling to him.

He continued to pet and soothe her and she breathed and blinked through the aftershocks.

She'd missed the part where they'd fallen the rest of the way to the ground until his hand skated down her leg and he made to shift.

She pushed back with the hand on his shoulder, and only then realized that she was still holding onto his dick and he was still rock hard.

She stopped him with the weight of her palm, then looked at his face.

Tension stiffened his jaw, his eyes blown wide with desire and just an edge of that pain and self-recrimination.

"It's fine," he started to say. "I can—"

She cut him off with a kiss, gentle and sweet, then released him.

He gave a shaky breath and shifted, wincing again at the no doubt agonizing feeling of his clothing on the oversensitive skin.

"Yeah, okay, so—” he began once more, then stopped in shock when she laid her hand, a little sticky and quite warm, over his on the ground.

He looked down, then up at her, then back down, brow furrowing as the pieces didn't quite come together.

It wasn't until she picked up his hand and guided it to where her other hand had undone his belt, button, and zip, that he started to figure it out.

He blinked at her, jaw working, and then she covered his speechlessness with a kiss, searing and slow and right in all the necessary ways.

Into his pants, past boxers held out away from his skin by her other index finger, she wrapped his hand around his dick, her fingers laid over top and between.

It took a few strokes from her before he really got it, the intensity of the sensation distracting enough that he broke from the kiss.

She sat back and watched his face, the pleasure and the disbelief and the sheer _need_ nakedly displayed in sharp contrast to his still dressed physical self.

She started out slow, more pressure than speed, holding him back when he would have changed that. Slowly, bit by bit she watched him come apart as he had done to her, wearing down his ability to think beyond the moment as steadily and inexorably as a river through a rock canyon.

When his eyes went from hooded to closed, she smiled, then pushed backwards, sliding along his legs. He roused at that, wrinkle between his eyebrows making an appearance before that pleasure-darkened brown of his eyes.

His head tilted forward a little, almost drunkenly, but she just kept going, shifting until she was straddling his calves.

Holding what little focus he had, she bent down slowly and deliberately, only breaking it off at the last moment to kiss the very tip of his dick.

He hissed, then jerked, a string of half-slurred words spilling out as she sucked him down, lips pressing against the side of his finger and thumb when she reached their hands.

"Oh God, Pep. Oh— Oh God. Pepper. _Fuck!"_

She swirled her tongue around the head and bobbed up and down, ears pleasantly full of the words he babbled and gasped and, in one memorable case, choked on.

"Shit!" he said, voice tight with the ever rising tension thrumming through him. "Shit, Pepper. I'm— Fuck! Oh God, that's so good! Oh— NGH! THERE! Theretherethere— FUCK!" he bucked as she sucked, their joined hands pressing down against his groin as she swallowed as much of him as she could get.

She paused, bending her neck at an angle that caused it to twinge, but wanting to see his face as he hovered on the edge, teetering and shaking with the effort.

His face was scrunched up, teeth gritted and bared, forehead wrinkled: he looked like a man on the edge, a man utterly consumed by the moment.

She squeezed her hand, his fingers responding the same under her touch, and his eyes cracked open just a sliver.

She twisted her wrist and sucked with everything she had and he shattered under her—their—touch, spilling down her throat and shaking between her thighs, the hand not twined with hers leaping up, but only grasping at air before flopping back down.

His jaw dropped on a long, low groan, head lolling to the side as his eyes flew wide, then fluttered shut again. 

That seemed to be the cue for the rest of his body to go limp, his bowed spine sagging back against the wall, the air loosed on a slow exhale.

She gave one last swirl of her tongue to lick up the last of his come, then pulled off like it was a popsicle, not his softening dick. That sent one last spasm through his body and wrenched a final grunt from his throat. 

Her fingers loosed, and his followed only because he had not the strength left to fight gravity as it pulled his arm down to the floor at his side.

She carefully tucked him back into his pants and did everything up, inching forward on her knees when she was done.

She sat there, looking down at him for a moment, smiling softly at his loose, relaxed form. It looked much better on him than the piano-wire tension at the window.

She bent, one hand sliding around the back of his neck, his head rolling toward her at her touch. When he was looking at her straight on, the other hand joined its mate at his neck, thumbs tucked under his jaw to steady him as she pressed her lips to his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, and finally, his mouth.

At that last, he made a sound, a grunt, and pushed himself up to meet her more fully, the hand not supporting his weight coming up to mirror her hands on her neck.

His nose brushed hers and he nipped and sucked at her lips, but pure exhaustion kept it relatively light. 

Finally that lack of energy won out and he sagged back down, forehead coming to rest against her cheek and jaw.

"Pepper, I don't know—"

He stopped and she could almost feel the terror of revealing himself, of baring his soul, even to her. She took no offense.

She knew very well what had put that fear into him and it made her furious and heartbroken by turns. It also made her silently vow again and again to never contribute to that and to not allow anyone else to do so if she could help it.

He swallowed and she could hear the click of his throat as he did so, his hand on her neck trembling against her skin as he braced himself for this moment.

She just waited, letting him remind himself that she could be trusted, that she never had and never would betray him in this.

"I don't know what to do," he whispered. "I don't know if I can— I—"

He sucked in a shuddering breath.

She kissed his head and then pulled back, thumbs on his cheeks as she smiled at him.

"You can and you will get through this. You survived Afghanistan and Obie and palladium and an alien invasion and a nuke to some godforsaken corner of the galaxy."

She ducked down until her nose was almost touching his, eyes locked on until her vision blurred.

"You are Tony Stark, and you can do _anything_ you fucking want."

The corner of his lips twitched up. "I am, huh?"

"Damn straight," she said, then kissed his nose and pulled back.

It took both of them to get upright again, Tony almost going down a second time when he bent to snag his tie from the floor where she'd dropped it.

She kept a grip on his arm and refused to let that happen and when he straightened again, he smiled at her. 

He pulled her in against his chest and kissed her temple, the loss of the heels dangling from her fingertips bringing her down a few inches.

"Love you," he whispered to her hair.

She turned into him, wrapping her arm around him so her shoes bumped against his back, the other still locked between them.

"I love you too, Tony. God, so much." 

Her eyes closed against the rush of emotions and he just tightened his grip holding her there while she fought her own demons, deliberately pushed away thoughts of him dying, of something happening to him in or out of that damn suit, of the next portal to hell closing with him on the wrong side.

He steadied her and waited on her until she shoved it all back in that locked box in her head and threw away the key, a final shaky breath the end of the matter. For now, anyway.

"Okay?" he asked when they separated enough to look at each other.

Pepper nodded. "Yes. Are you?"

He smiled, slow and easy like the sun rising on his face. She didn't need to hear his response, seeing that smile, the one so few people knew, that she treasured every time she—or anyone else—could coax it out.

"Yeah," he said. "I think I am."

She nodded once more, then started urging him toward the door and beyond the elevator up to their home, their bed, and, God willing, a good night's sleep. "Come, Mr. Stark."

He chuckled, and she knew before he opened his mouth what he would say next. "I already did, Miss Potts, but I'm game to try again."

She couldn't stop her own chuckle. "We'll see," she said.

"Square deal," he said, arm coming up around her shoulder as he let her, once again, take the lead in his life.


End file.
